I went to see the new film “Suffragette”, (director Sarah Gavron, daughter of Labour peer Lord Gavron, who sadly died recently) at a special showing in Westminster. It isn’t perfect, but it certainly makes you think. This is what I thought. The struggle is not over. There are equality laws in place, but women are still not…
“A referral fee is a payment made for the referral or introduction of a client or potential client. Referral fees and arrangements can take different forms. Although they are also used in other commercial relationships, they have attracted particular attention when they involve the legal professions.” That’s the definition used in a parliamentary briefing paper. …
There was a debate on the future of the BBC, led by Baroness (Joan) Bakewell, on Thursday. Nearly every speaker defended the BBC and the need for it to continue ungagged by government under the renewed Charter. Yes, there have been mistakes, but compared to those made by other institutions, including government itself, they are…
I watched with alarm and shame the footage on the news last night of our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs attending the reopening of the British Embassy in Iran. The portrait of the Queen displayed in the building still has “death to England” scrawled above it. Amnesty International recently calculated that there have been 700 executions in…
This post is not strictly to do with life in the House of Lords, but readers may draw their own conclusions about planning law, the drive for retail growth, and the expansion of the numbers of students (not an unmitigated blessing) who need affordable housing at the university. The building of large blocks of graduate flats overlooking the…
